


Wild Rushes

by Thornofthelily



Series: akeshuake fairy tales [2]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: AU - Sirens, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Shameless song fic, Vague Worldbuilding, mentions of drownings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:47:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26364421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thornofthelily/pseuds/Thornofthelily
Summary: Beware the wild rushes, my mother told meThat grow on the bank side along the salt seaBut I being young, I heeded her none
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Series: akeshuake fairy tales [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1981270
Comments: 10
Kudos: 106





	Wild Rushes

Goro stepped off the winding dirt path and loosened his tie as he slipped down the embankment. It was the only suit he had, so he was morbidly grateful it was appropriately somber for the only occasion he had to wear it. Tomorrow, he would be moving in with his estranged father, a man so vile his mother risked poverty and starvation just to get away from. He knew the man wasn’t looking forward to taking in a whelp like Goro. He didn’t even deign show his face at the ceremony today.

Pushing past the grasses and reeds, Goro wanted to delay tomorrow as much as possible. Avoiding the roads and wandering through the wilds seemed preferable to going back to the empty house and packing his few belongings.

His mother had always told him to stay away from the riverbank. He used to obey her without question. But she wasn’t here anymore.

A beautiful sound greeted him once he breached the curtain of foliage the water’s edge, a song that curled into the hollow space where his heart used to be, filling him with a strange kind of peace he hadn’t felt since he received the news. Before him stretched a glittering blue expanse, the opposite shore a distant green and gray strip, but nearer than that, he spotted a circle of dark curls a few paces into the water. Woven into the damp mop of hair were lilac-colored irises and dripping green moss. The figure faced away from Goro, but undoubtedly the song came from that person. Below the head, all he could see were slim bare shoulders, the rest of the figure swallowed by deceptively deep water.

Goro took one step closer, and the singing stopped. The figure turned to face him, slowly, but not out of fear. No, Goro sensed the slowness was deliberate, planned, as though aware of Goro’s transfixed gaze. Eyes the color and luminescence of twin moons glowed beneath dark brows, a smile affixed between dark red lips.

“Hello there. We haven’t met before, have we?”

A strange way to begin a conversation with a naked man in a river, but what about today has been normal? “No, we haven’t.”

The man paused, grin hitching up even further. “Will you give me your name?” One hand broke free of the water, palm up, asking.

A familiar fear pricked down Goro’s spine, but his mother lived out here long enough to teach him how to respond to this kind of question from this kind of creature. “No, you may not have my name. But if you wish to call me something, you may call me Goro.”

The eyes sparkled merrily, catching the fading light of the setting sun as his hand disappeared below the water. “Clever boy. Then you may call me Akira.”

Goro sat a few feet from the water lapping at the moist earth, finished removing his tie, and let it puddle to the ground next to him. “I’m honored to make your acquaintance,” he responded in rote.

He heard more than saw Akira glide closer to him, water displacing around him as though by his will. Goro couldn’t tell if the water actually touched him or not. “What brings a clever boy like you to this place? Surely you know the danger that lurks beyond the rushes.”

Goro risked a closer study of Akira. Dark, damp curls framing a wild, impish face, the flora forming a makeshift crown upon his head. His narrow neck met a prominent collarbone, stretching over waifish shoulders. He looked young, no older than Goro himself, although that likely was a facade. And of course, his voice was most compelling of all. Dark, smooth, ringing clearly over the rustling grass and crashing water like a bell, resounding in Goro’s head.

“I was always told never to come down here,” he answered honestly. Creatures like him value the truth, especially from humans. “But the… person who so bound me is no longer here to enforce those rules.”

Akira made a low sound of sympathy. Did he actually feel it, Goro wondered, or was it part of the act of luring him in? “So it is mere curiosity, then?”

Goro leaned back on his palms, stretched behind him. “That, and a desire to not return home.”

Akira had not stopped smiling once since facing Goro. The diminishing light now hit his face in such a way to play with angles and light and shadowed his expression, shifting his face from friendly to hungry. “How fortunate for you, to find both things you sought, then.”

The water parted further for Akira as he moved even closer. He raised that arm again. Long and slender, five fingers, just like his. “Would you care to swim with me?”

That made Goro laugh. “I know what you are, Akira. And you know that I know. Is this really the best you can do?”

Akira dropped the hand. Goro might have worried about offending the creature, but he didn’t think he broke any rule in particular. “Couldn’t hurt to try,” Akira mused with a wink.

Goro highly doubted that. Akira _did_ mean to hurt him, he was sure of it. That’s what his kind do. Lure lonely hearts into their open arms until their mouths fill with water, lungs bursting, devouring them down in the depths. Goro had grown up with stories of them- siren, undine, selkie, kappa, rusalka, the names were endless, appearances varied, but they were all the same. Spirits of the water who lured you to your death.

Goro hadn’t expected to find one so beautiful.

The sun cast the sky in a glowing haze of gold and red and the barest edges of indigo and umber. Akira did not speak again, merely stared at Goro with those glittering moon-like eyes. Goro stared back. Before the light left the sky entirely, Goro returned to his feet, grabbing the tie he had abandoned in the dirt. He took two steps closer to the water, almost, but not quite, close enough for the water to lap at his toes. Akira’s eyes shone in the remaining vestiges of the sun. “A token of our meeting,” Goro said with some formality, letting the tie slip into the waves. “And a gift of appreciation for allowing me to see you.” The water carried the tie against the current until it wrapped around Akira’s fingers, resting lightly on the water’s surface.

“This is my river,” Akira answered carefully. “If you come to my shores again, I will call for you, Goro.”

His heart quickened a beat or two. His mind raced over the conversation, and he realized what he said. Not an error, necessarily, or a trick, but a typical twisting of his words to suit Akira’s purpose. _You may call me,_ he had said. He gave him permission to call on him. Although Goro did not think he was bound to Akira in any way- he was careful to word that his gift was in repayment for the visit, and nothing more. And he did not intend to visit again.

That is, until he spent a month within his father’s home. The only escape he could imagine was a trip to the river after running messages for his father all day. He did not know what the letters contained, except that each person who received one seemed to attach a special significance to it. Some reacted fearfully, others with anticipation. But that wasn’t the worst of it. No, his father’s hand raised against him if he delayed even in the slightest at any command, the blistering drunkenness within the confines of the manor, the influence he held in town preventing Goro from speaking up at all-- that was the hardest to bear. His father was planning something, but Goro couldn’t figure what.

Shido expected Goro home by sunset. He managed to finish his errands with some time to spare, so he took a brief detour to Akira’s river. He wasn’t sure what he expected. Would Akira be in the water once again, singing that alluring song? Strange, though, he thought his call was supposed to compel him into his embrace, numbing his self-preservation instincts and allowing him to fall under his spell. But the song he heard that time, while beautiful, did not hold any special power or have a hold on him.

The more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed. Did Goro really have an encounter with a water spirit, or just a mischievous boy who wanted to pretend like he was? When Goro pushed aside the rushes, he half-expected to see an unbroken field of calm blue water.

“Good evening, Goro,” came the familiar voice right away.

Akira looked just as he had before. Slightly damp hair filled with flowers and greenery, shining moons for eyes, still submerged nearly to his neck in the water.

“I’m back,” he said haltingly, his brain misfiring at the sight of the spirit and forgetting what a proper greeting should be. A simple statement of the obvious should be enough to get by.

“Yes, you are,” he said, voice lilting up in amusement. “Have you forgotten how to speak to me already?”

His face flushed. The creature picked up on everything, didn’t it? “I would have returned your greeting, but I did not want to be deceitful. I’m not sure I am having a good evening, after all.”

For the first time, Akira’s face lost its proud little smirk, fading to something almost like concern. “What troubles you?”

Goro examined the words for any hint of trickery, considered it from all angles in case it was a ruse to catch him in some way, but he couldn’t fathom how this could be turned against him. Still, always wise to be cautious when a creature like this asked a question of any kind. “I am… bound to another,” he answered vaguely, not wanting to reveal anything like family, names, titles, or responsibilities. Surely the creature would understand this much. “One who requires obedience and servitude in exchange for providing for me. The work is hard, but it’s the...behavior that is more difficult to manage.”

Akira tilted his head, the gesture making him look even more alien. “Behavior?” He repeats back.

Again, Goro couldn’t sense anything in such a simple question that could be used against him. Was he intentionally being so concise to encourage Goro to talk to him? But he was not sure how much of this he wanted to reveal to Akira. “It’s nothing,” Goro lied for the first time. Akira’s eyes flashed but he said nothing. Goro wished he hadn’t said anything, already missing the jovial smirk on the spirit’s face.

“The what brings you back to my river?” Akira asked suddenly, echoing the first question he ever asked Goro. “If it truly is _nothing._ ” The biting words stung him more than he expected, but he recovered quickly, glad he could return to honesty once more.

“A desire to see you.”

A ghost of Akira’s smile edged back into his features, although it did not melt the coldness in his eyes. “A bold statement. If you desire me--” that hand rose from the water once more, beckoning him. “Then come for a swim with me.”

By now, they both knew that tactic wouldn’t work, but somehow it lightened Goro’s heart anyway. “I do not desire you, Akira. I merely said I desired to _see_ you, and see you, I have.” He realized, numbly, seeing Akira did make him feel better. Somehow, this dance he played with the spirit, while rife with danger, was one Goro at least knew the steps to. A dance he chose to initiate, the steps familiar, as opposed to Shido’s, which he had no control over, the music and the partners lost in the night.

The sun had begun to sink yet again, and Goro needed to return. He had time to make it back to Shido before it vanished, but the earlier he arrived, the less chance Shido had accuse him of something. After a moment of hesitation, Goro worked off one of the gloves he’d begun wearing since living with his father. Simple, black leather, designed only to keep his hands warm when running errands in the chill November weather, he felt no qualms about parting with it as he set it in the river. “A token of our meeting,” Goro repeated from last time. “And a gift of appreciation for allowing me to see you.”

The glove floated inexorably to Akira, where it vanished instantly beneath the bobbing water. His eyes shined as Goro turned and walked away.

Goro did not see Akira for quite a while after that day. Shido began to include Goro in more and more of his business, and before he realized it, he was just as tied to Shido’s shady dealings as his father himself. He was the last one seen delivering the package to Mr. Okumura before his violent and mysterious illness. He publicly attended a meeting with the railway minister, alone (after a sudden cancellation from his father), hours before he snapped and assaulted his family. Whatever Shido was planning, Goro was clearly set up to be an accomplice, if not the perpetrator. And he couldn’t begin to imagine how to untie himself from these suspicious circumstances. Especially after the first body appeared.

Floating down the river, _his_ river, a prominent artist, well-loved by everyone and, Goro knew, one of Shido’s patrons. Drowned, apparently. Anxiety settled in his chest, a new companion he couldn’t shake. The town went into an uproar, wailing in grief, but eventually the courts found the death was an unfortunate accident.

As they did with the next body. And the next.

Goro couldn’t sleep at night anymore. Rumors reached his ears about how dangerous that river had become. Three deaths in as many weeks. Was it Akira? He couldn’t recall an unusual number of deaths at that river before, but who knows, maybe Akira had only recently come to haunt that place. Maybe… maybe something Goro did antagonized him. But Akira knew nothing of Goro's life, he'd made sure of it. The victims all had connections to Shido, too, one way or another, and their deaths ultimately profited him, though not in ways other people would be able to see. Only Goro could make the connections, with what he knew of his father’s business. But at this point, who would believe him? He knew Shido could easily turn and point the finger back at his own son, and Goro knew he would do so in a heartbeat.

He was too scared to visit Akira’s river. Too scared to see if the spirit was devouring his father's victims, but also, Shido constantly had eyes on Goro. He couldn’t be seen going there, not after what he deduced to be Shido’s plan. Two more bodies, within ten days of each other. The anxiety in town escalated to a fever, rumors spiraling to include fears of a malevolent spirit haunting the river. Curfews in place preventing people from being out after dark, guards along the banks. Goro felt sick, even worse than he felt when his mother died. At least grief had the decency to be hollow and aching and fade over time. This pain, he had no name for, and it lingered, just as worse tomorrow as it was yesterday.

Goro thought there was nothing he could do. Nothing he could say would stop his father’s quest for power without also dragging him down with him.

He hardly noticed the song filtering through his window at night, carried by a gutsy breeze, pulling him down another path.

Of course… of course. There was one way.

He knew every creak and groan of Shido’s house. He learned how to sneak through this place after many a night, hunting for an extra morsel of food, or to avoid waking Shido after a day of blackout drinking. He escaped into the stillness of the night, sneaking past most of the curfew patrols. There were fewer than he anticipated; not even the guardians of the law wanted to be caught at night these days.

Same for the river itself. During the day, it was frequently patrolled and guarded, but now? Still. Quiet.

Regardless, he crawled across the dirt and elbowed his way past the rushes and reeds, wanting to remind himself of Akira’s sharp but playful face. Just a glimpse, he promised himself. But the waters were calm and clear and hauntingly _empty._

This was the right place, but Akira was gone. Perhaps, Goro wondered with a nauseating twist to his stomach, Akira was already feeding on his next victim. He curled up on the bank and allowed himself to cry, something he hadn’t even done when his mother died. He considered calling out to him, but that would risk alerting whatever meager force was watching the river tonight. And besides, _intentionally_ calling on a fae creature? Madness. Above all the warnings his mother gave him, in this she was clear: Never ask those creatures for anything. They will always ask a price you aren’t willing to pay. He made a mistake saying he desired to see Akira. That ensured he would never see him ever again.

Once his tears subsided, Goro wiped his face with the back of his hand. His ring, the signet ring of his father’s crest, caught the moonlight and shimmered. He stared at it with mute disgust before ripping it off his finger and hurling it into the water.

The next morning brought regret, sliced through with terror. Shido would be furious he “lost” the ring. It was a sign of his ownership over Goro, and more than that, it was as good as his signature. Any document stamped with it would be as weighty as an order directly from Shido. If anyone recovered it, his official stamp could be faked. He would have to forge new ones as a precaution with a unique marker to distinguish them from a fake. It would be such a hassle. And Shido would pass those hardships down to Goro.

The music flowed through his window once again, but this time, he actually heard it. It wormed into his head, sending sparks and flares of light behind his eyes. And yet, it chased away that ever-present monster of anxiety that had been with him for months, replacing it with that eerie calm. _Akira._ He knew it had to be him. By why? How was his voice reaching him from here?

Quickly pulling his shoes back on, he bolted from the house and sprinted down the streets to the river he just left, empty and uncaring, in the loneliness of the night. Shoving aside the foliage at the bank without a care, he almost sobbed when he saw Akira standing near the shore, higher out of the water than he’d ever seen him. In the morning sun, he absolutely _glowed_ , rivulets of water sparkling down his bare chest, dark hair curling and haloing his face with sunbeams woven through it as surely as the morning glories crowning his brow. His eyes, silver and mysterious, looked right through Goro. For a third time, he held out a hand to Goro, but now, he saw the glint of a ring on his right ring finger. _His_ ring, the one he’d tossed in a fit of bitterness.

Somehow, he knew. Akira made good on his promise and had called Goro. But the song wasn’t a compulsion, wasn’t a spell to lure him in. It was a request, a pleading, _begging_ note that Goro’s soul answered before his brain could catch up. He supposed, a bit late, that he could have offered Akira something other than his real name. Not his _true_ name, that would require his full appellation, but maybe the call wouldn’t have reached him this far, if it were fake. No matter, now.

“You slighted me with your lie, so I repaid you in kind,” Akira began, as forward and bold as ever. “I refused to appear for you as you desired. And yet, even without my seeing you, you offered me this ring. You did not say what it was for.” His fingers reached for Goro, and something tugged behind his heart, urging him forward.

Goro took one step into the river.

“Tell me, Goro. What is the purpose of the ring? I cannot accept a gift that would leave me in your debt.”

The water rose up to meet Goro’s knees. He could say it wasn’t _for_ Akira, wasn’t for anybody, but the implication would be clear to a creature like Akira. Twice he met him and offered him compensation. A third time he went to see him, but was slighted. And yet, he left a gift behind anyway. There was a kind of intention in that throw, one he could only now formulate from his scattered thoughts. “The purpose of the ring is to bind,” he explained. “To tie one person to another as one. That whoever wears the ring acts in the stead of the other, carrying the same weight and authority.”

Akira’s smile finally graced his face, and it made him look radiant. A creature of darkness and water absolutely thriving in the warmth and light of the sun. It made Goro’s chest ache, and he reached out to Akira.

The water was up to his waist. Strange, Akira didn’t seem any closer.

“I know the purpose of the ring now.” Akira’s voice was almost a purr. “But what reason did you have to give it to me? Were you expelling the symbol of your relationship with the one who bound you?” He supposed that was accurate, in a way. Akira knew how to spot Goro’s lies, his evasions, so he should be able to see the answer in his eyes. “You know, the most effective way to remove such a binding, is to bind oneself to an even stronger force. Break the weak connections by connecting yourself wholly and completely to something else, something which will sweep away all attempts to reclaim you.” The ring glittered on his finger. “Tell me the words, Goro, and I will sweep you away.”

The water was up to his chest. Not because of any compulsion, not because he was entranced- not in a mystical sense, at least- but because he wanted what he always wanted. To see Akira. To really _see_ Akira. See him with his his hands, his eyes, his mouth, every part of him wanted to see Akira and to know him.

Goro’s fingers grazed that outstretched hand, slid over the ring and up his wrist, enfolding themselves around Akira’s neck. He was cold, so very, very cold, but it cut through the heat of Goro’s loudly-pounding heart. It chilled him to his bones, bringing a sweet kind of numbness and relief to his aching head. Everything felt so much simpler here. His mother’s warnings faded from his mind. He never needed to be wary of the wild rushes on the riverbank. The creature hidden behind them was so gentle and kind as he guided him deeper, his feet losing traction with the silty bottom until they were both floating.

The water was at his chin.

Akira’s cold red lips grazed his own as he whispered, “Tell me who the ring is for, Goro.”

“It was always you,” he murmured back, fingers tangling into mossy dark curls. “Since I first saw you, you had already captured me. Always you, only you.”

The water filled Goro’s mouth as Akira kissed him, dragging him under the surface.

* * *

Shido swore and screamed, but the boy was nowhere to be found. No one had seen him since he came home yesterday. _**Useless**_ _creature_ , he snarled in the darkness of his thoughts. _Worthless and pointless as his mother, I should have just ended him and pinned the deaths on him, but I thought I could wring some more usefulness out of that simpering pest. He often lingered by the river, it would be the perfect set up… after I ousted him from my estate's inheritance, he attacked all my business partners. It would have worked so_ _ **beautifully**_ _but of course he had to ruin even this perfect plan…_

He headed down near the river, half-hoping he’d find the useless boy somewhere nearby. Instead, he heard a song. A beautiful, echoing song that sounded like it was just for him, ringing as clear and hopeful as a bell. It called to him. He just had to go find the source, somewhere closer to the water. It sounded so much like his son’s voice.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by The Decemberists's "Rusalka, Rusalka / Wild Rushes". I listened to it recently and just thought, "holy shit I need to make an AU of that," and voila. Written in one sitting


End file.
